Saturday, August 13, 2016

One behavior that captures the imagination of the public and biologists alike is the mass-nesting behavior known as the arribada. It's maybe even more special because it's only known to occur on about 12 nesting beaches around the world (one of which is Playa Ostional in Costa Rica) and only the ridley sea turtles exhibit this mysterious nesting behavior

Olive Ridley arribada on August 1, 2016

For years and years I've dreamed of my chance to see an arribada on the beaches of Costa Rica and I've imagined it a hundred ways. What I didn't know until recently was that I would be able to conduct my very own research project when I saw the arribada for the first time.
After the "flota" was announced on July 31st, the team spent the day packing our equipment and racking our brains about the tiniest details of our plan and restlessly trying to nap as we anticipated a long night ahead. Finally, we were able to load everyone up with equipment and meet our extra volunteers to walk out to the section of the beach where we set up stations.
When we arrived on the beach, myself and the other assistants that had never seen an arribada before were brimming with excitement and a little nervousness. I knew that this would be a night for the record books. We arrived early enough to beat most turtles to the beach to set up, and I couldn't help but notice the amazing clarity of the sky and how magnificent the Milky Way looked, it was as if seeing stars for the first time.
After about a half hour of dancing on our toes waiting for our first female, she finally arrived. The complications of combining two separate yet intertwined PhD projects slowed our first night of work, but we worked diligently to find a flow that worked for us, and after two ultrasounds, morphometrics, egg weighing and counting, blood and tissue samples, measurements and more, we finally released her. At this point, I looked around and saw three more females emerging and thought to myself, "So it begins!" We approached another turtle and started the process over, and the beauty of the night and the turtles did not escape me, though we were quite busy. By the time we released the second female, the arribada was in full swing. Everywhere I looked around me was an olive ridley in various stages emergence, body pitting, nest digging, egg-laying or nest camouflage. You couldn't walk five steps in any direction without running into a turtle!

Countless olive ridley tracks the morning after

Because we work with red lights to minimize disturbance to the turtles, it can be hard to see very far around you. Luckily, offshore a few miles was a heat storm. I say "luckily" because every now and then would be a flash of lightening, and when you looked around where you stood you could clearly see that you were surrounded by hundreds of turtles in all directions. Walking among them for a few brief moments between samples, my breath was taken away. I've worked a few nesting beaches throughout my work with turtles, but I've never seen anything like this.

Brie with straggling turtles the morning after the arribada

It's drilled into your head as a sea turtle biologist that turtles have a hardwired process to their nesting that is done roughly the same way every time, but as you look around at hundreds of turtles following their protocols, you actually get to witness how uniform each step of the behavior is. While some things are so similar, being able to see so many turtles in one location at one time also lets you appreciate the differences. I saw turtles missing limbs, parts of their carapaces, and yet still here in Ostional, making their contribution to the next generation. In that moment, looking into the faces of the turtles, seeing thousands of eggs being dropped into the sand all around me, every struggle that it's taken to get here, every disappointment, rejection, frustration along the way was worth it. When you see this many turtles in one place, following the protocols that have allowed them to survive 120 million years on this ever-changing planet, you can't help but feel hope. As a biologist, you spend so much time looking at numbers, trends, and sometimes it's sad news. Spending your days studying all the many threats that sea turtles face daily can suck the hope out of you from time to time, and the deeper you get into understanding how dire the situation is in some places, the more your excitement and hope can wane. But when the lightning flashed that night, and I could clearly see the hundreds of turtles surrounding me, I couldn't help but feel that original love brewing in my chest again, the love I felt caring for my first sea turtle in rehabilitation, the love I felt the first time seeing a nesting loggerhead in North Carolina, that love I felt as a child pressing my face against the aquarium glass, drooling over a sea turtle at the Omaha zoo in Nebraska. It was though the ice around my heart melted, and I again have hope for them. As our last female for the night returned to the ocean, I patted her back and thought, "Thanks, mama, I promise you that I will not give up, I will keep fighting for these babies you've left behind."

A turtle returns to the ocean after nesting

As I sat in the sand that night, collecting valuable data, I thought back to my early days of college, speaking to various adults about my dream of studying sea turtles. So many times I was told that it would never happen, that it was not realistic, that I would be better off finding something to study in my home state of Iowa or Nebraska, because EVERYBODY wants to do something like study sea turtles, and it would be too competitive for me to be successful. I'm glad I didn't listen to those people, as well-meaning as they may have been, because they were wrong. As I live and breathe, working here in Ostional, I want to scream from the rooftops, "Dreams DO come true, don't give up!"
We worked all night until the sun came up, as immediately before dawn one of our radiotagged turtles was on the beach! Around 5:30 the sun emerged and there were still turtles on the beach, so you know we had to take that opportunity to take some photos. We were sandy, sweaty, sore and bug-eaten, bearing various battle scars from the night before, but we were all happy as we returned to headquarters that morning for a few hours' sleep. Shortly following, we had to prepare to do it all again, and we worked all night 4 nights in total, but I can safely say that I will never forget my first arribada. All I can hope for is that the work that we're doing here does more than add (many!) checks to my bucket list, but that it results in tools and data that will help us help sea turtles. Stay tuned with us as we continue our work, and pura vida!

We had four boat days this week in which we captured sea turtle couples following mating. This project has been my first opportunity to work with sea turtles on a boat and I might be addicted! For someone who has primarily worked on nesting beaches, sea turtle rehabilitation hospitals and the St. Lucie Nuclear Power Plan for my master's work, it is definitely an awesome experience to see the turtles in their element. We were very excited to see mating turtles in the water and have a chance to ultrasound the female to see if she had eggs and/or developing follicles while also getting an indication of overall health. What's exciting about this study from a physiology standpoint is that we hope to recapture five of our sampled females that we attached radiotransmitters to. This means that hopefully we can follow the reproductive cycle of a given female over the course of the season! If we're lucky we may even try to capture the females in the water as well as during nesting. We will keep you posted on how this effort goes!

We are planning a trip to San Jose for later this week to do some paperwork and other less-exciting parts of fieldwork like dropping off samples we've collected to our collaborators that the Universidad de Costa Rica. We hope to do a couple of fun things while there since it's the first time in Costa Rica for myself as well as our two stupendous field assistants. They have worked so hard helping us with prepping equipment and cleaning up afterwards and we want to make sure that they also have fun while they're here.

As far as my personal experience here in Costa Rica goes, my efforts to improve my language skills have been, at times, frustrating but are definitely paying off. Little by little, a few words or a conversation at a time, I hope to see a difference!

This field season has been a dream come true, and there is still so much more to come as we transition into nesting beach sampling. We await the arribada which should come at the end of the month! Check back for updates!

Wednesday, June 15, 2016

Howdy all!
I'm writing to update you on what I've been up to the past couple months as I prepare for my first trip out to the field in Costa Rica! This past year I've been furiously applying for permits (in English AND Spanish), writing grant proposals and defending my ideas to my dissertation committee. My good friend and collaborator and I have also been designing data sheets, tracking down equipment, finalizing protocols and now we're down to labeling vials and packing!

I will be periodically posting updates here for you all to check out what I'm doing! We will (hopefully) be doing BOTH in-water sampling AND nesting sampling! If I get lucky - I'll get to see a mass nesting event called an arribada, in which hundreds or even THOUSANDS of sea turtles haul out on the nesting beach to lay their eggs in synchrony - and I'll have some awesome videos and pictures to share with you all!

Thanks for keeping up with me and I look forward to posting much more interesting blogs over the next few months!

If you would like to donate or share my story to support my efforts to conserve turtles, please check out www.gofundme.org/seaturtlebrie. Every dollar and share helps!

Hey everybody,
I was recently honored to be featured as the Council Bluffs Community School District Alumni Spotlight! I am so fortunate to have received the opportunity to use AP coursework to help me prepare for college, in fact, I loved college so much, I never left! :-P

I've attached a photo of the featured story, but I hope that you'll go over to their website and check it out: http://cbalumni.org/stories/brianna-myre/. You'll also see mentioned at the end of the story that I'm working on fundraising to help me with the costs of living and doing research in Costa Rica! If you would like to learn more about the project and possibly contribute, please head over to: www.gofundme.com/seaturtlebrie.

Thanks for tuning in and check in with me as the summer progresses, I'll have much more exciting sea turtle action for you very soon!

Hi all! I've been so busy with teaching, coursework and setting up things for my project that I've neglected to post several blogs along the way, although it's been quiet here, trust and believe that it's not quiet in my daily life! Ha! I have a few big announcements:

1. My master's research is officially in-press to be published! I will post more information when I get the proof, that project was a labor of love - I had to garner money, permits, collect samples, analyze them in the lab, statistically analyze the numbers AND write the manuscript with the help of my beloved collaborators. I am so excited to see my first publication go out and can't wait to add more to the list - I am FAR from done!

2. I'm OFFICIALLY leaving Texas for the second half of the summer to conduct my first field experiment in COSTA RICA! It is so important that I get out there this year, and so I'm working with another experienced graduate student as well as a few undergraduate mentees who will benefit from working with experienced sea turtle biologists, including me!

3. I've launched a fundraising campaign to help me get my PhD project going, if you'd like to learn more about the project, I've posted my lengthy description below from the fundraising page. I'm also posting the video below, if you would like to donate, please visit www.gofundme.com/seaturtlebrie. I will be making an effort to personally thank each and every person who donates to me, I'm nearly to $1,000 in just two weeks!!!

I'm a PhD student in Biology at Texas A&M
University-College Station. I have been offered the career opportunity
of a lifetime to work with esteemed Marine Biologist, Chris Figgener
(see her page at https://www.gofundme.com/wuhvd6zj),
who has many accomplishments but her most famous one is the viral video
of the extraction of a straw from the nose of an olive ridley sea
turtle in Costa Rica last summer (watch it again! And please consider
saying no to single use plastics like plastic bags and straws! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wH878t78bw).
We have mutual interests in sea turtle reproduction with very different
specialties that give our collaboration the potential to produce a
large amount of critically important data.

We are especially
interested in this coming season due to the El Niño event, and we need
to test out some novel tools to find out if we can support and justify
an even larger experiment next summer.

The beautiful thing
about this particular study is that any donation will be supporting at
least double the data production of a typical fieldwork-based sea turtle
study because of the unique expertise that Chris and I along with our
collaborators and mentors bring to the table.

Chris and I both
have published or in-press papers in our respective sub-fields at
previous universities in which we designed projects, obtained grant
funding, and applied for endangered species research permits. We also
went out in the field to collect our samples with our collaborators
under state and federal permits, and analyzed samples in the lab.
Finally, we conducted the statistical analyses and wrote the papers with
the help and generosity of our esteemed mentors, and we can't wait to
do it all again!

The results of our master's projects have
driven us into the sea turtle reproduction arena, and we aim to collect
physiological and nutritional data, stable isotopes, genetics,
reproductive, thyroid and feeding behavior regulating hormones, behavior
and movement data, ultrasound documentation of the gonads and more.

I hope that you will consider donating to this project because we plan
to maximize every cent by sharing data and consolidating our resources.
The data we collect in this project will garner many scientific
publications and management implications that will directly improve the
lives of nesting female sea turtles. I aim to develop tools that will be
interesting in terms of evolutionary physiology as well as useful by
providing conservation implications. We also hope that by working with
olive ridley sea turtles, we will be able to learn more about the most
critically endangered sea turtle in the world, the Kemp's ridley.

I also want to add that I would be deeply grateful for any donation
that I receive, no matter the dollar amount. I have been pursuing my
college education for 8 years, and my fieldwork this summer will allow
me to accomplish many personal life goals and bucket list aspirations.
One is that applying for permits and conducting fieldwork in Costa Rica
has and will continue to require the improvement of my Spanish speaking
and reading skills, which are skills I have been pursuing for years of
my college education.

I faced difficult challenges in trying
to make my dream of studying sea turtles happen when it came time for
college – many well-wishing adults told me that everybody wants to study
sea turtles and it just wasn’t something that was a realistic career
choice. I thanked those people for their advice and pursued my dream
anyway.

Luckily, several opportunities to intern around the
country gave me the edge I needed to get into a graduate school that
would allow me to study sea turtle physiology and endocrinology. I am so
grateful to all my collaborators and mentors during my internships and
during my graduate training because you invested in me and have led me
to success in publishing research and traveling to national and
international symposia to present the results of the previous project,
and I am amped up to collect more data and do it again and much bigger
in scope.

One more reason why this project means so much to me
is that I have wanted to work in Costa Rica with mass-nesting sea
turtles since my childhood. It all began when I was about 10 years old, I
inherited two red-eared slider turtles from my uncle, and a turtle
biologist was born. Thank you for reading, watching the video, and
sharing my story. your support means the world to me! If you can donate,
an extra hug to you! You will be helping turtles in a double-whammy of
intertwined projects and supporting the dreams of several biologists who
will help us along the way.

Friday, April 22, 2016

In honor of Earth Day, I forced myself to sit down and write a poem that's been bouncing around in my head for years. It's written with a specific precious turtle in mind that I cared for after a serious boat strike injury. She has since recovered and been released, and I think of her often.

This poem is written as though I'm speaking to her after she first arrived to the hospital. I am dedicating this poem to all the sea turtle biologists, conservationists and environmental activists out there taking steps to make this world a better place, thank you and Happy Earth Day.

Tuesday, April 19, 2016

March 5, 2016 was one of the best days of my life, as I was honored to receive an Archie Carr Best Student Paper Award in Biology (runner-up). While I know that based on the laws of physics and chemistry that the universe strives to be in dynamic equilibrium, what happened March 6, 2016 nonetheless appears to be a cruel twist of fate.

Sixteen years ago or so my parents let me bring home a red-eared slider turtle from the pet store, and I promptly named it Hercules (only to find out about 4 years later that SHE was a female). While we acknowledged that it was a big decision, I don’t think any of us realized what the consequences of such a decision would be – that turtle ended up inspiring a career in sea turtle conservation physiology research and a lifelong vow to help turtles every way I can until the day I die.

Hercules, I had hoped we would have 16 more years of adventures together, but it appears that that was not in the cards for us. It was painful to be 3,000 miles away in Peru and receive this news, but we will have a proper burial when I get home. We have been through so much together, and coming home at the end of a long day to watch you swim, chase fish around your tank, go crazy over peeled grapes or take you outside to crawl in the grass were simple pleasures that has kept me going through some very difficult transitions in my life, and it has been for as long as I can remember. You were with me throughout my childhood, you went with me to Louisiana to start my master’s, you came along during my fieldwork in Florida, and you have seen me through the first 8 months of my PhD in Texas.My only consolation is that I finally got to put you into the beautiful tank you’ve always deserved that I could never provide in the past, so that at least you could have a month or so swimming freely and living the high life.

Thank you for changing my entire future and helping me discover a deep passion that gives meaning to my long days and purpose to my long nights. Thank you for helping me find hope and happiness. I don’t think you ever cared much for me, but thanks for never complaining in a frequency that I could hear, and I hope that in some way I was able to show you how much I love you.

Every time someone asks me how a girl from Iowa decided to pursue a career in sea turtle biology, I talk about my childhood friend, and how it all began.

While some people might say you were “just” a turtle, to me the world is a sadder place without you in it.

With a heavy, heavy heart, I renew my promise to find answers to difficult questions, develop new techniques and resources for biologists and conservationists, and fight to make this world a better place each and every day for turtles and other organisms like you. I also promise to do everything I can to inspire, encourage and mentor the next generation of biologists and conservationists so that I can one day rest in peace knowing that this important work continues. Because as much as I know that turtles need people like me, I also know that people like me need turtles on this planet so much more.

I promise to do all this, and to never forget all that you meant to me and what the life of a single turtle can represent in this world.

Swim free at last, my dear friend and hero, thanks for everything. This one’s for you.

Are you feeling worthless? Are you feeling anxious about a
big task? Are you doubting your ability to accomplish the things you want from
life?

Don’t.

I know it’s not that simple. I know this is something you
have always struggled with.

But stop.

Stop being so mean to yourself.

You need to quiet all the doubting voices in your head.
Silence them and just listen to me, because no matter how you’re feeling right
now, you have to trust that I am right and they are wrong.

All your life you’ve been faking it. You’ve heard this
mantra over and over and over, “Fake it until you make it,” right? And you’ve
been faking it. Has it helped? Did you wake up one day feeling confident and
amazing? No. You never have and you never will by faking it. So, I’m telling
you that it’s bullshit and you need to let that go.

From now on, I want you to think about CULTIVATING
CONFIDENCE in yourself.

You are not a factory of productivity. You are not a robot
that is constantly churning out tasks. You are a wonderful, talented, amazing,
living, feeling human being. You are so much more than those things because you
have DEPTH and EXPERIENCE and PASSION.

You are a beautiful garden. You are capable of incredible growth, prosperity and life! But for you to grow to your full potential, you need constant care. You need to be cultivated. You need to be watered, inspired, tended to and, of course, loved.

So, that sounds nice and everything, but how do you
cultivate confidence?

You need to reach down, deep inside. You need to find all
those voices that are tearing you down. You need to hear them when they start
to chip away at your confidence, and you need to reframe what they say.

Instead of saying, “Why aren’t you done with this yet?” Say
to yourself, “Wow, I’ve really made progress on this and I’m going to finish
it.”

Instead of saying, “Everyone thinks you’re an idiot!” Say to
yourself, “I am a talented, bright human being and I will prove to everyone how
much I have to offer.”

Do this every time you feel those voices rising up again. Do
this every time you prepare for a big event. Do this every time you start to
feel that self-doubt creeping in and making second guess things.

You deserve to be treated with love by everyone around you,
but ESPECIALLY by your internal self. Who else do you spend 24 hrs/day, 7
days/week with? Who else is with you even in sleep? If you are constantly
cutting at yourself from the inside, how can you expect to perform at your
best? How can you find confidence and happiness with half of you always tearing
at the other half?

You can't.

If this seems hokey, think of it this way: if your little
sister came to you, your best friend, your son, and told you they had made a
mistake or they were nervous about something important happening in their
lives, what would you say to them? Would you tell them they’re an idiot? That
they’ve screwed up their only chance at success? That they’re guaranteed to
fail? Of course not! You would tell them that they can do anything they set
their minds to, that they have every opportunity to turn this right back
around, that everything is going to be okay.

You deserve to hear that in your weakest, private moments,
and you are the only person who can be there for you then. You deserve to hear that you can do anything because it’s true!

Look, a positive attitude is not a guarantee for a good day,
but a negative attitude almost always is a guarantee for a bad one. Allow yourself a fighting chance!

When I started being kinder to myself, I was happier at
work, I got more done, I felt more confidence and I was able to do so much more
high-quality work because I wasn’t spending ½ my energy each day
self-sabotaging.

You deserve to feel happy and full while you’re on your
journey to the things that you want. And when you hit a speedbump, you deserve
to forgive yourself and move forward, because it’s not productive or helpful to
keep kicking yourself over and over. You create a vicious cycle.

You have earned all your accomplishments, nothing has been
handed to you. Give yourself the credit for it! Stop giving all the credit to
luck or to others!

You have HUGE things coming at you in the future – the best
is yet to come! So, you need 100% of your energy dedicated to doing what you
need to do and giving yourself the emotional support you need to do it.

BE KIND to yourself, especially when things are hard.

BE EXCITED ABOUT THE POSSIBILITIES AHEAD, and not afraid of
the possible bumps along the way, and know that you will get there, no matter
how long it takes.

BELIEVE YOU CAN and you will.

You’re not done yet, not today, you have so much fight left
in you. And don’t you dare let those inner voices say anything to the contrary.

About Me

My name is Brie and I'm a PhD student studying sea turtle reproductive physiology at Texas A&M University-College Station. My goal through pursuing my PhD is to become a comparative endocrinologist, because I love hormones and all that they can tell us about an animal's health, history and status. I am very passionate about using science to develop tools for conservation, and love to teach and work in outreach to help spread the message of how amazing science is and how it can help us and bring more meaning to our lives.